Review: 'Wicked Little Letters' is irresistible fun with Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley
Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, both Oscar-nominated for playing the same haunted mother at different ages in 2021’s "The Lost Daughter," could read an instruction manual and keep you riveted. Happily, "Wicked Little Letters," now in theaters, provides funnier, fiercer material.
Set in 1920 at the height of the women's suffrage movement in the British seaside town of Littlehampton, the movie stars Colman as Edith Swan, a God-fearing unmarried woman who lives with her parents (Timothy Spall and Gemma Jones).
She’s been on the receiving end of handwritten poison-pen letters (f-bombs are frequently dropped) from an unknown sender.
The suspicions of Edith, one of several townsfolk being sent these obscene notes, fall on Rose Gooding (Buckley in a fireball performance), Edith’s neighbor and former friend, an Irish immigrant and single mother with a mouth on her.
As the rebellious Rose tells the police, "Why would I send a letter when I could just say it?"
Fair point. Yet the case causes a sensation throughout the U.K. and soon goes to trial. Hold your skepticism. "Wicked Little Letters" is based on fact. Mostly.
As a title card informs us at the start: "This story is more true than you’d think." Any resemblance to today’s internet trolling is purely intentional. They didn’t call them mean tweets 100 years ago, but you get the point.
Intrigued? Thanks to Colman and Buckley you will be.
The plot escalates when Edith receives the latest letter, which calls her a "sad, stinky b****" and other insults we can’t print here.
Working from a script by Jonny Sweet, director Thea Sharrock delights in a very British way of swinging from stiff-upper-lip repression to a swearing free-for-all that takes no prisoners.
It’s the Swans, especially Edith’s dictatorial prig of a father (the reliably great Spall), who prod the police into action. While two male officers, cartoonishly played by Hugh Skinner and Paul Chahidi, fumble about, it’s Gladys Moss (the dazzling Anjana Vasan of "We Are Lady Parts"), the only woman on the force, who has the smarts to solve the mystery.
Actually, as a whodunit, "Wicked Little Letters" is pretty easy to figure out. There are times when the filmmakers make an attempt to steer the movie into deeper waters. The patriarchy, embodied by Edith’s controlling father, is definitely the villain of this pro-feminist piece. After WW1, when their independence blossomed, women were forced back into subservience.
We see this in the way police constable Moss is treated in contrast to the men, most of them dumb as a shoe, who cut a bullying path to power. That injustice might get you swearing along with the women in the film.
Female defiance is the real key to unlocking the film’s major themes. It’s too bad the drama has a way of dampening the rowdy humor.
"Wicked Little Letters" fares best when it just lets the laughs rip. Near the end, Colman’s timid Edith -- up to here with her belittling dad -- explodes in a virtuoso tirade of profanity that might just make you stand up and cheer.
The same goes for any scene in which Colman and Buckley share the screen, infusing thrilling life into a flimsy script that doesn’t deserve them. Who’d have guessed that watching two indisputably astounding actresses curse each other out could be such irresistible fun? Don’t overthink it. Just sit back and behold.
